


All the Cracks I Cannot Hide

by Moongirl12121



Series: Hopeless [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Arguing, Blue Paladin Allura (Voltron), Could be triggering, Depression, Fear, Gen, How Do I Tag, I might do more installments for each character, Keith does not go to join the Blade, Lance does not want to be the Red Paladin, Lance focused, Lance wants to go home, Langst, Lotor can be trusted, M/M, Mental Health Issues, No Dialogue, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Seventh Wheel fears, Silence, Sniper Lance (Voltron), Spoilers for Season 4, Spoilers for Season 5, Stream of Consciousness, relationships are not the focus, team breakdown
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-24
Updated: 2018-04-24
Packaged: 2019-04-27 03:20:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14416557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moongirl12121/pseuds/Moongirl12121
Summary: This war is hopeless, it can't be won. I just want to go home. Everything seems to be going wrong, until I stepped out of the picture.





	All the Cracks I Cannot Hide

**Author's Note:**

> This is not a happy story! It does not have a happy ending! Please be warned that I wrote this when I was going through a kind of depressive episode to try and get the negative emotions out. Lance's feelings are not my own, but the general feeling of depression is what I tried to give him. I just tried to capture the hurt emotions and homesickness and betrayal I believed he felt during the seasons.

The castle was so quiet. Like a deserted or abandoned place that had been left for the dead. Needless to say, the silence was unnerving. It felt like it suffocated any noise that attempted to penetrate it. That could be partially due to the fact that it was a ship flying through the void that is space, but that possibility wasn’t exactly comforting anyone. Earth wasn’t quiet, even in the most still moments I had ever experienced, there was always something or someone making a sound that I could pick up.

My family was loud, and boisterous, and I used to get headaches from all of it. But I was the same as them, laughing as hard, joking as much, yelling as loud. The Garrison hadn’t changed much, just the number and people that I had to be normal with.

My family probably thought I was dead now, at the very least missing. I had to keep them in mind some days just to get up. How proud they would be, how happy they would be to see me when we finally won and could go back home.

Desperately I hung onto this confidence that I blanketed myself with. More and more often there would be cracks in it that showed how scared I really was. As a Paladin of Voltron I couldn’t be this afraid, I couldn’t be this broken inside. I knew I worried Hunk when he noticed the cracks, but with his new engineering toys and projects, he wasn’t paying as much attention to me as he would have back at the Garrison. It was for the best that he didn’t notice, there wasn’t anything really to be done about it anyway, he would just stress bake into exhaustion over it if he knew.

Luckily for me, no one else ever seemed to catch my cracks. At the very least, they never mentioned them. For that I was grateful. I could hold out long enough, long enough for this war to be over, for us to defeat the Galra and return peace to the galaxy. _I can hold out, I have to hold out._

…

For a moment there I could have sworn that Keith was going to tell me something that wasn’t antagonistic. His expression had gone soft, eyes melting in a way I didn’t know violet could be. Fear had clawed my throat, and I opened my mouth, throwing a verbal barb at the mullet head that made his beautiful eyes return to their normal stormy nature.

There was no way I could handle anything changing at this point. The routine was the only thing keeping me together. The silence slowly searing that apart. Every new species we encountered, every new thing we saw was exciting and terrifying and tore just a little bit more at my mind. They would be so different, I would feel so unbalanced. I couldn’t even act like a normal human being anymore. I certainly couldn’t act like myself, not around these aliens, not around this team, not around Allura and Coran, and these days… not even around Blue.

I was lucky that no one else had been there to see it. To see how pathetic I was. On my knees and pleading, trying everything I could think of. I flattered her, promised I would do better, swore I would clean her extra hard after every single time I took her out. Continuing, I broke down, sobbing, asking her what I had done wrong, begging her to let me fix it, asking her _why?_ But she remained silent, confirming all of my fears, and shattering my heart.

_She promised. She promised she loved me and had chosen me special. She reassured me over and over again that she would make sure I got home safely. She told me I could hold on a little longer, that she knew I had the strength to keep going._

The worst humiliation was having to go to the bridge. Keith yelling in the comms, Allura demanding to know why I wasn’t in Blue yet, Coran’s pitying expression when they both heard the story. To add insult to injury, Allura left the bridge, and next I saw her, she was out in the thick of the battle, piloting Blue.

I hadn’t stayed long after, leaving the bridge, my fists clenched.

…

Things stayed numb after that. I was never really sure what was happening. I had given my bayard and armor to Allura, after all, she was the Blue Paladin now. She needed them, and I did not. My thoughts turned sour, I watched the team interact and bond together. They still could not form Voltron, but I refused to even try to pilot Red.

It would be a slap in the face that would finally break me. Plus, she would never accept someone so weak. Picking up Keith’s leftovers was the ultimate stab the universe was trying to give me. I refused to stand there and take it. Allura and Keith were angry with me, demanding that I give it a shot and try. I could feel a faint connection to her, but I didn’t want it. I wanted Blue back.

Keith was beside himself, angry that I supported him as the new leader of Voltron, angry that I wouldn’t take up the mantle that was calling to me, angry in general. I didn’t care. None of it mattered. I wasn’t a paladin, he wasn’t the boss of me. He was the leader of Voltron, and I would follow his orders as long as he didn’t try to give me his leftovers.

_Why does Keith keep persisting? I keep throwing barbs at him, I keep trying to drive him off. Why won’t he stay away?_ Anger built up in me, replacing the numbness, and I would regularly lash out at anyone that came too close. Emotionally and physically.

Coran showed me how to use everything in the training deck. Including the armory, and different sniper trials. I would help Voltron so I could go home. They didn’t need me anymore, but maybe I could be of some use.

…

_What does Mom’s voice sound like again?_ In the void of space it was hard to remember sounds. Even harder as time passed and silence was all that met me in my mind and around me. Successfully alone, I avoided everyone at all times. I hadn’t seen another person in weeks. I knew exactly what was going on, but I didn’t feel like commenting on them.

Lotor and his generals were a threat, and they had most likely discovered that Voltron couldn’t be formed anymore at this point. If they didn’t they were stupid, and Lotor didn’t seem like he was stupid. His moves were all calculated. It would be impossible for him to lose at the rate things were going.

It didn’t matter to me. I just wanted to go home. Coran and Hunk pulled me aside, asking, begging me to please give Red a shot, for the universe, for Voltron, for them, anything they could think of. Hunk brought my family into it, and I snapped, lunging for him.

He was pinned to the ground in seconds, and I snarled at him, daring him to mention my family like that again. Hunk was frozen on the ground in fear, eyes staring at me as though I were a stranger. Coran looked confused and concerned. He didn’t know me as well as Hunk did, but I imagine he was pretty sure that what I did was not normal for humans.

There was no follow-up to their pleading. Pidge ignored me, plunging into her quest for her family. I hated her for that. She could find them out here, but I was alone, my family all at home worried about me. _I wonder if they’ve had a funeral for me yet. What is me coming back going to do to them?_

…

I could see cracks in Keith as he struggled to keep it together like he knew Shiro would want. Even after everyone else gave up, he kept asking me. It wasn’t a persistent begging, Keith had more pride than that, but every day before they would go out on missions, or whenever they would have a briefing that I refused to go to sense I wasn’t a Paladin anymore, he would simply ask me if I would try Red.

Every single time I would refuse him, or ignore him. Continuing on what I was doing, I would train, and sometimes I would be sent out on missions since I would consent to that, and wanted to be helpful and not seen as the burden that I was.

Never was I sent out on team missions anymore. Always solo. If I tried to enter a lion, the shield would come up, and I couldn’t keep dealing with that heartbreak of trying, so when they tried to make me do a mission in Green with Pidge, I refused. It was too much to keep on pretending I could go near the lions.

It was almost a relief when Shiro was found. For a moment my heart had soared, thinking everything could now go back to normal. But Shiro was different, and Black wouldn’t let him in either. I hated every moment Shiro was bound to the ship with Coran and I. He kept up a disapproving stare, and even had the audacity to tell me that I needed to get in Red, for the “good of the universe”.

I told him he needed to get back in Black and stop disappearing for the “good of the universe”. He didn’t seem to know what to say to that. Even Coran was stunned into silence, his normally cheery face ashen as he stared between the two of us. Nothing left to say, I left for the training deck, and next I had heard, Shiro was piloting Black again.

_Good._

…

I saw it with my own eyes, and I couldn’t believe it had happened. I had helped it happen even, my sniping skills had come in handy with this. I had dealt several blows, maybe not the final one, but certainly a few that counted.

Zarkon was dead.

The Galra empire was in shambling civil war, different warlords fighting for dominance. Essentially it was chaos. Voltron was still needed to keep the peace, the rebels I had joined with Matt Holt still needed me. I didn’t care.

Striding into the bridge where Allura and Shiro were having a meeting, I demanded to go home. Both of them refused. The fight was legendary I thought. No one had heard me scream like that, and I had never seen Shiro or Allura raise their voices like that.

At the end of it, the only other person left in the room was a concerned looking Lotor. He plead with me, trying to flatter me to stay, that they needed my help, that I needed to be rewarded for taking down Zarkon. I left the bridge, waving him away. I would leave in the morning whether they liked it or not.

They did not like it, going so far as to lock me in an airlock without my space suit, or any weapon. A rudimentary prison since the castle was never designed to hold people. What was the point in keeping me in here? If the whole reason was because they needed me, there was nothing they could do to make me.

…

Alone. Drowning in the worst kind of silence. Being so close to the vacuum of space really sucked out all sound. 

_How long have I been in here?_ It was impossible to tell. Were they giving me three meals a day? Or just two? The silence was gnawing away at my sanity, I could feel it, hear it even as it chewed through tissue. _They would find me dead in the morning and then they would feel sorry!_

My brain was too big inside my head, too heavy to hold up. Everything was moving too much, and I couldn’t keep my feet. The cold metal of the castleship was leeching whatever warmth was left in my body.

_I want to go home._

My heart was breaking, stuttering and faltering in this small room getting smaller, silence successfully swallowing my voice and soul. The darkness was creeping, not all at once. Which was worse apparently, because with it creeping so slowly, I had time to panic. I knew what it was and I could see that I couldn’t avoid it, but that didn’t stop my throat from screaming.

The darkness swallowed my voice first, then my vision, but I could still hear the dull thudding of my heart, the whoosh of blood in my veins. I wanted to panic as I heard it slow down, as I felt every bit of my body slowly shutting down. But I didn't. There was no point panicking. I could do nothing to stop this.

_Why is this happening to me?_ I reached out, trying to get an answer before I was swallowed completely.

The gentle rocking that came with being in a boat cradled me. I wanted to cry. Warmth seeped into all of my bones, and I was shocked at the difference. I hadn't known I was cold. Soothing vibrations echoed in my mind and chest, as though I could physically feel them.

_What a way to go._

**Author's Note:**

> Please let me know what you think, and if I should do one for the other Paladins as well. Those most likely will not be as depressing, but you never know.
> 
> Thank you for reading!


End file.
